Matthew 4:10
Matthew 4:1010“Away from Me, Satan!” Jesus declared. “For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’”
is a cornerstone text for JW worship theology. Jesus quotes and tells Satan, "It is Jehovah your God you must worship [proskuneo], and it is to him alone you must render sacred service." The NWT renders proskuneo here as "worship" because the object is Jehovah. The Watchtower deploys 4:10 as the decisive proof that worship belongs to Jehovah alone — which is then used to restrict the same Greek word to "obeisance" when directed at Jesus elsewhere.
The Watchtower has a real exegetical point here: does affirm that exclusive worship belongs to God. The problem is not the verse; it is the NWT's inconsistent rendering of the same Greek word (proskuneo) across the New Testament. In it is "worship" (object: Jehovah). In — the disciples' response to Jesus walking on water — it is "obeisance." In — God commanding the angels to proskuneo the Son — it is "obeisance." At the door: "Your own NWT in translates proskuneo as 'worship' because the object is God. When the same Greek word is directed at Jesus, the NWT downgrades it to 'obeisance.' That is a theological decision, not a linguistic one. If Jesus receives the same proskuneo reserves for Jehovah alone, what does that mean?"
's "worship" rendering is itself accurate. The divergence is at the corpus level: the NWT renders proskuneo as "worship" when the object is Jehovah (Matt 4:10) or false gods (Rev 13:4, 13:8), but downgrades the same word to "obeisance" when the object is Jesus (Matt 14:33, 28:9, 28:17, Heb 1:6). The selection is by recipient, not by context or grammar. The apologetic significance of Matt 4:10 is that it anchors the exclusive-worship principle the Watchtower then uses the inconsistent proskuneo rendering to preserve against the passages where Jesus receives the same worship.